eclectic_electron

That's the worst part. The fact they keep doing it means it probably works. I just don't understand how.

They even ambush me every time I go to the grocery store. And they've doubled my bill since I signed up. Why bother marketing when you can raise rates whenever you want? They could save so much money by not mailing every day and hiring people to hunt me

You clearly haven't heard of private equity

Doesn't that ultimately punish not the company, but anyone who lent money or sold material to the company? Usually assets would be liquidated to pay off creditors but if all the assets go to employees creditors don't get paid. This really hurts all the small businesses who sold supplies or materials to the company and haven't been paid for them yet.

And of course, this all ignores the fact that for most companies most of their valuation is in their intellectual property, mainly their brand identity and recognition. And for manufacturing company's, even most of the tangible assets are going to be things like factory buildings and equipment. Those things are all highly specialized so it's very difficult to get someone else to come in and use that space to the same level of productivity. That will result in major damage to the local economy when a huge source of tax revenue and jobs suddenly disappears.

I'm not saying all this because I think companies should get away with whatever they want. Not at all. I just want to give some context for why these "obvious solutions" aren't being used. It's not that the entire world is in some conspiracy. Many of these problems are legitimately very difficult to solve.

where is the money going to come from if they can't sell anything?

I just got a 2018 Honda Odyssey and it's great. It has the touch screen, but also has physical buttons for almost all of the climate and radio stuff. That's how it should be IMO. Just give us both!

I have engineer in my title, I work in software, and there kind of is a PE available for software but it's actually just an EE license with maybe half a dozen software questions tacked on. I've never heard of anyone in software actually getting it. It's slightly more common in EE and ME, and I think a lot more common in civil and structural engineering.

I don't know how aggressively state engineering boards actually enforce their hold on the word "engineer", but I still try to be careful. The last thing I want is to get sued for misrepresenting qualifications.

The article is pretty short so it's hard to tell, but I know in other cases there can be a significant difference between whether or not you say you're an engineer when you make these claims.

The term engineer is effectively a trademark controlled by a state licensing board. They want to protect the word engineer so it's clear to the public when someone is speaking as a professional licensed engineer vs not. Overall, this is a good thing and a direct response to specific and numerous very bad things that have happened in the past.

However, this has also resulted in some very awkward situations because the word engineer has almost become a genericized trademark in that there are many people who have the word engineer in their job title but do not have or need a professional engineer's license.

Based on the fact the guy won the case, I'm going to assume he wasn't substantially misrepresenting his qualifications. The headline is very sensationalized though and the article is lacking any detail, so I don't know how relevant this little anecdote is but I find it interesting.

I think a big component of the problem is location. I may have a different perspective living in a low cost of living city. Just a few years ago I lived in a two bedroom apartment that was $650/mo. It was old and not very nice, but totally functional and reasonably safe. It was a bigger complex so the landlord was a management company. They weren't amazing or anything, but they held up their end of the lease. I understand the situation somewhere like NYC or California is going to be radically different.

I think that's where a really interesting question comes in though, do people have a right to housing? Or a right to housing in the place they're currently living? It's a big difference. Forcibly relocating people is... Problematic at best. But there are places like LA where it's almost physically (geologically) impossible to build enough housing for everyone who wants to live there.

If you haven't already I'd recommend listening to the podcast mini series "according to need" by 99 percent invisible. I really appreciated the perspective it offers into some of the practical challenges of trying to get homeless people housed.

Ultimately I don't know that I'd call housing a "right", purely for semantic reasons, but I do think the very existence of homelessness and housing insecurity is a devastating critique of our social and economic systems. I didn't think we'll ever have a system that completely eliminates renting/short term housing, but we do clearly need to change a lot of things about how housing works now.

What do you mean no choice? There's always a choice.

Realistically many people don't have a choice to buy, because they don't have the credit score, reliable income, or down payment, but I don't see why that blame falls on landlords and not on the banks or the government?

I'd be willing to bet you bought at least a few years ago, and probably couldn't afford the house you're in now if you had to buy it today. I'm in a similar spot. It definitely feels wrong. The rapid increase in prices in the housing market in the past few years is ridiculous. I think it's a lot more complicated than "landlords" though. I think a lot of the issue stems from restrictive zoning that prevents the construction of small homes in dense neighborhoods. A lack of respect for trade jobs also contributes, with massive shortages of skilled construction workers driving prices up.

Granted, I live in a relatively affordable smaller city. If I were in a city with a lot of real estate speculation like LA or Toronto I might feel differently. But speculators aren't landlords. I have a much bigger beef with a speculator who let's a house sit empty than a landlord renting out apartments.